DUNS | The Contracting Education Academy

March 25, 2019 By AMK

GSA changes direction on contracting identification

The General Services Administration is leaving behind its entity validation work with Dun & Bradstreet following the March 18 award of a new $41.75 million entity validation contract to Ernst and Young.

Entity validation services ensure that federal agencies can confirm the identity of any company, individual or organization wishing to do business with the government.

“Securing this five-year contract means that the federal government will have a safe, secure and unified method for validating entities, while also simplifying the process for those who seek awards,” said GSA Office of Systems Management Assistant Commissioner Judith Zawatsky in a news release.

“This award greatly improves the government’s ability to manage data and is an important step forward to competitively procuring entity validation services on behalf of the entire government award community.”

According to a September 2016 GSA blog post, the agency has partnered with Dun & Bradstreet since the 1970s, and the company had longstanding control over government identity validation.

Some industry groups have in the past been critical of D&B’s proprietary control over the contracting validation process.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2019/03/19/gsa-changes-direction-on-contracting-identification/

October 23, 2018 By AMK

Are GSA’s bold data management and transparency moves the right moves?

Data is essential to guide evidence-based decision-making, a critical best practice toward informed policy development.

A recent Government Accountability Office report has taken the government to task for failing to properly implement empirically sound and evidence-based practices as part of their deliberative process.

To encourage evidence-based decision-making, the recent President’s Management Agenda laid out a new cross-agency priority goal—“Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset”—to develop and implement a comprehensive federal data strategy. Over the course of the next year, with input from the full spectrum of government and non-government stakeholders, the first governmentwide data strategy will be developed, along with specific recommendations for implementation. Office of Management and Budget sought to inform this process by issuing a comment draft in June.

By most accounts, the commitment to an overarching federal data strategy is welcome and timely. Huge amounts of data collected and managed by the federal government can be applied in a large variety of ways to foster economic growth and social good.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2018/10/are-gsas-bold-data-management-and-transparency-moves-right-moves/152043/

September 11, 2018 By AMK

For the first time in 20 years, GSA opens bids for business numbering system

The General Services Administration opened up bids to manage its vendor verification system — which ascribes a unique identifying number to each contractor doing business with the government — with the release of a request for proposals Aug. 31.

The Data Universal Numbering Systems, or DUNS number, has been the government standard for identifying contractors, non-profits and other organizations doing business with the federal government since 1962 and became an official part of the Federal Acquisition Regulation in 1998.

“The DUNS number is not just a number—it is a system for maintaining accurate, comprehensive and timely information—and it is issued rapidly and free of charge for all entities wanting to do business with the U.S. federal government,” according to the website for Dun and Bradstreet, the vendor that has managed the system since its inception and for which the number is named.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/analytics-data/2018/09/first-time-20-years-gsa-opens-bids-business-numbering-system/151032/

September 4, 2018 By AMK

GSA taking bids for new contractor validation service

The General Services Administration has started the long-anticipated process to acquire new validation services for federal contractors and grantees.

The agency issued a request for proposals Friday (Aug. 31, 2018) seeking an identifier and unique numbering system for its Integrated Award Environment and System for Award Management to validate that companies or other organizations that do business with the government are who they say they are.

This comes ahead of the expiration this year of its current validation contract with Dun & Bradstreet.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fedscoop.com/29638-2/

September 21, 2017 By AMK

Here’s how the government could better track contract spending

All legal entities in the world should subscribe to a common identification system, so the public can track their relationships, according to a new report.

Doing so could disrupt the monopoly Dun & Bradstreet has on the identification numbers contractors use to work with the federal government. But if the public and federal government want to better understand where money goes, they’re going to need to use a common identification system, the report from records giant Lexis Nexis and the Data Foundation, a government-transparency focused advocacy group, argued.

When government agencies track awards to contractors, they sometimes use their own identification systems for internal purposes. In the U.S., federal procurement officers also use Dun & Bradstreet’s “DUNS Number” to tag every contractor; those businesses are required to register for their own number through Dun & Bradstreet itself. But those contractors also use proprietary ID tags, and often both groups silo their identification system by the industry the business is in.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2017/09/heres-how-government-could-better-track-contract-spending/141012

The General Services Administration is leaving behind its entity validation work with Dun & Bradstreet following the March 18 award of a new $41.75 million entity validation contract to Ernst and Young.

Data is essential to guide evidence-based decision-making, a critical best practice toward informed policy development.

The General Services Administration opened up bids to manage its vendor verification system — which ascribes a unique identifying number to each contractor doing business with the government — with the release of a request for proposals Aug. 31.

The General Services Administration has started the long-anticipated process to acquire new validation services for federal contractors and grantees.

All legal entities in the world should subscribe to a common identification system, so the public can track their relationships, according to a new report.

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